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Comment by thisCtx | Hacker News Reader

Historically correct but do we need to tell that part of the story going forward?

Can we not set the idea of “human rights” on its own pedestal and decide what those are and carry them forward in tradition and song?

Why do we have a literal obligation to the asinine part of a dead philosophers opinions on their origin, along with an actual useful concept?

Let’s dispense with the all-father bits and see it as we claim to; within the legislative and judicial process we in practice are all afforded the same privileges and obligations.

Let’s discuss how in practice that’s not true and stop giving a shit what dead guy first conjured the idea. Caretaking the literal lineage is nothing more than banal taxonomy fetishism.

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> Historically correct but do we need to tell that part of the story going forward?

Yes. Hiding the truth is almost always wrong.

I don't think the point is to suppress history. But that ideas about human rights can have a firmer foundation than a particular religion.

I.e. moral principles such as equality and some basic rights result in a safer and more productive society for the vast majority of people, vs. alternate principles.

They are less arbitrary principles than saying this group of people is better than another group, and results in a society with greater productivity and resiliancy than one where the strong continually put down the weak.

The history is still meaningful, but is not the rationale.

Sorry, that's absurd. The rationale for why something exists cannot be divorced from the history for why it exists. And there is no source for a principle of equality in nature.

The history of something, and its current rationale, are two different things.

They are related, but certainly the latter can be talked of coherently separately - if one chooses.

Equality can be argued for in terms of economics, game theory, the objective recognition of commonality between humans, and from many other avenues, without reference to religion.

> Equality can be argued for in terms of economics, game theory, the objective recognition of commonality between humans, and from many other avenues, without reference to religion.

Literally none of that makes any sense. Within the system of human dynamics, nothing within that system can place an a priori restraint on the "right" rules for the system's existence, and it is literally impossible to talk about anything objective from within an intersubjective system. You're running up against Godel.

So all the people alive that are uneducated in US history can’t step foot in America unless they learn about George Washington?

It’s literally impossible for us to be where are without history as it was. It’s not an obligation for us to keep making kids aware Thomas Jefferson existed.

I didn’t mean “hide it”. It can exist in books but why must we point to it in public today?

The truth is humans behaved as they needed to survive given the world at the time. The rest is analogy and metaphor handed down as song and story. We can never know truth just speculate.

It can be in books but to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, we must update our society as our experience reveals new truth.

Am I under an obligation to discuss Jesus and Roman Empires to educate my kids why we goto a grocery store and why it’s bad to hate on others? Or repeat the Founders when we vote?

Can’t we simply do as we do, justify it as we need to today, without uttering the names of the dead?

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